Extract text with java

Question

If I have the string below, how can I extract the EDITORS PREFACE text with java? Thanks.

<div class='chapter'><a href='page.php?page=1&filename=SomeFile&chapter=EDITORS PREFACE'>EDITORS PREFACE</a></div> 

Answer 1

As you wrote in a comment of your question that you want what is within href, using Regex here it is:

<a[^>]*? href=\"(?<url>[^\"]+)\"[^>]*?>

This regex will work with Microsoft .NET Framework. It'll capture the content within href putting it in a group called url.

Just noted that this question is tagged with Java. In Java there's no named group as of JDK 6, so here's the solution for Java:

<a[^>]*? href="([^"]+)"[^>]*?>

The above regex will capture the content within href putting it in group 1.

Test it here: http://www.regexplanet.com/simple/index.html

Run this program:

import java.util.regex.Matcher;
import java.util.regex.Pattern;

public class RegexMatches
{
    public static void main( String args[] ){

      // String to be scanned to find the pattern.
      String line = "<a href='page.php?page=1&filename=SomeFile&chapter=EDITORS PREFACE'>EDITORS PREFACE</a>";
      String pattern = "<a[^>]*? href=\'([^\']+)\'[^>]*?>";

      // Create a Pattern object
      Pattern r = Pattern.compile(pattern);

      // Now create matcher object.
      Matcher m = r.matcher(line);

      if (m.find( ))
      {
         // Found value: <a href='page.php?page=1&filename=SomeFile&chapter=EDITORS PREFACE'>
         System.out.println("Found value: " + m.group(0) );

         // Found value: page.php?page=1&filename=SomeFile&chapter=EDITORS PREFACE
         System.out.println("Found value: " + m.group(1) );
      }
      else
      {
         System.out.println("NO MATCH");
      }
   }
}